Article by
Barbados Today

Published on
June 20, 2017

Member of Parliament for St Thomas Cynthia Forde is vowing to fight for residents of her constituency who have seemingly been denied house spots on land Government acquired right in their neighbourhood.

Accusing the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) administration of betraying the trust of Barbadians, Forde said that as far as she was aware, not one of the 47 parcels of land at Forty Acres, St Thomas had been allocated to any of her constituents.

“The DLP came on platforms saying that they are going to make sure equity prevails, that accountability is nurtured and that good governance is going to be what they would stand for. Then to have learnt on Friday the spots were allocated, but the people of St Thomas seemed to have been overlooked,” she said on local radio today.

Forde acknowledged that she had sent a formal letter to then Minister of Housing Michael Lashley suggesting that the land be compulsorily acquired to provide housing solutions not only for the people of St Thomas, but for people across Barbados. And she stressed that she was not against people from outside the parish getting plots.

However, the St Thomas representative said there were people who lived in Forty Acres who felt they should have been sold a plot near home.

“A couple of people from St Thomas have applied for a spot . . . . People are calling me from St Philip and St Michael and saying they received letters inviting them to take up the spots. Not a fellow, not a girl, not a young man, not an old man from St Thomas has said to me he has received a letter to take up one of the spots,” the MP complained.

Forde added that several of her constituents were in need of housing solutions and she therefore felt they had been hard done by, in the allocation of house spots to people from outside the constituency.

Identifying some of the housing issues that confront her constituents, Forde said some of them have been evicted, while others have lost their jobs and could no longer service their mortgages.

The St Thomas representative promised to have senior personnel at the Ministry of Housing document how many people from St Thomas, if any, were being accommodated in Forty Acres, vowing to pursue the issue to the end in the interest of fairness and justice.

When contacted, Minister of Housing Denis Kellman told Barbados TODAY he was off island and suggested that we get in contact with General Manager of the National Housing Corporation, Lanette Napoleon-Young.

However, she was unavailable for a comment when Barbados TODAY contacted her office.